Home sweet home ... Lorenza Bacino with her family. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

'You are a barbarian!" thundered my father in his thick Italian accent. We were outside a church in Rome, on a family holiday. I'd dared to say I'd had enough of churches and museums and wanted to go to the park for an ice-cream. I was just five years old. My father was 54 when I was born – old enough to be my grandfather. He had been a war correspondent in his youth and was a journalist and author throughout his life. His uncompromising intellectualism pervaded my life, stifling childhood frivolity and permeating every room of the large, gloomy house where I grew up, in a dull north London suburb.

Thousands of dusty leather-bound books filled the shelves of his library. Sombre paintings adorned the walls and objects were artfully displayed. As I cartwheeled round the living room I knew there would be trouble if I knocked anything over. Weekends were spent traipsing along Portobello Road for antiques or going to museums. There were some fun afternoons when mum and I shopped for shoes or went to the swings in the park, but mostly our activities focused on what dad wanted to do.

Growing up as an only child meant there was no one else around to share my adolescent feelings of mortification about my father. I secretly hoped he wouldn't emerge from his study when friends came round.

The house and all its associations made me feel trapped and suffocated. Desperate to shed the burden of intellectualism and the monotony of suburbia, I left as soon as I could. Mum, who understood how I felt, encouraged me to go. I began my travels by returning to my birthplace, Italy, where I soaked up the joie de vivre and taught English. France and Australia followed. Throughout my wanderings, I always had my daily phone call with Mum and I always made it home for Christmas.

It wasn't until I had a family of my own that the notion of "home" began to resonate with me. I had met my British husband in Holland, although because of his work we lived in Belgium. With the arrival of our children, Max and Isabella, my world began to shrink. But I didn't care. I was happy to focus on them and delighted in organising outings and picnics and play dates. I embraced my new role as a mother trying to emulate what my own mother had shown me: the fun, the laughter and her endless patience and humour in the face of adversity.

I was enthralled to see the close relationship my children were developing with their father, also an intellectual but so different from my own. Books continued to play an important role in our lives and we were determined to pass that love on to our children, without the obsessive seriousness that had shrouded my childhood.

One day, this comfortable existence was shattered by the news that my mother had collapsed and was in hospital, unlikely to pull through after a massive stroke. She was in a coma by the time I reached the hospital and died a week later.

My father had passed away a few years earlier, aged 89. I always assumed I'd have much longer with Mum, as she was 20 years his junior. After her death, the responsibility of dealing with the family home weighed around my neck like a ball and chain. All those things I had rejected in my youth now demanded my attention.

Six weeks later, we moved back to England and into the house. Max, who was only three, kept asking where Granny was, what we were doing there and when we were going home. Isabella, at a year old, was blissfully unaware and just went along with whatever was required, including settling quickly into a new nursery.

The neighbours kept asking about our intentions: would we stay, sell or maybe rent? Property developers arrived on the doorstep promising lucrative returns if we sold the top part of the garden for bungalows. And I was surrounded by stacks of cardboard boxes with my head in turmoil.

What was I going to do with all this stuff? Deciding what to do with all the books was going to be a major undertaking. And how would my husband cope with moving into a house that not only wasn't his, but was full of other people's things?

How does it feel to live in your parents' home? That's the question people kept asking me: the implication, from friends, was always that they couldn't conceive of doing such a thing. People I'd only recently met would walk in and stare in bewilderment at the eclectic mix of furniture and furnishings, the strange paintings on the walls, the 1970s kitchen, and my father's extensive library. I could see them cast their eyes over the living room, a puzzled expression furrowing their brows as they struggled to relate what they knew of me to all this stuff. I immediately felt the need to explain why I was surrounded by strange things that were clearly not all mine.

As I sifted through my father's old photos and documents, fragments of my parents' lives stared me in the face. I realised how much I did not know, and how many questions I had not asked.

Who was Ritva, this beautiful woman in the black-and-white portrait, who had written neatly "To my long lost prince" across the bottom of the photograph? What had it been like as a war correspondent on the Finnish front? What had Paris in the 1950s been like for the glamorous-looking couple my parents then were? These questions swirled around my head as the realisation sank in that I would never again have the opportunity to ask.

All the while, the concept of "home" haunted me. Were we home? Was it time for me to give up my vagabond lifestyle? Was I going to put down roots after 20 years of running away?

I had planned to stay only long enough to sort things out after Mum's death. But four years on, we are still here – in the house my parents bought in 1968, the house I always had such an ambivalent relationship with.

Over time my own family has grown into the space. The children have brought this tired old house to life again. Together, my husband and I have decided what to keep and what to throw away. He taught me the value of my past and what was left to me by my parents. But sometimes panic would take hold: should I really get rid of this table or that chair? Would Dad approve of the changes we were making? What would Mum have done?

As I ploughed through my history, the atmosphere around me began to lift and the doubts diminished.

Finally I have learned to accept that it is now our house and I am free to make any decision I like. We've painted the walls, hung up our own pictures, put fresh carpets down and installed a modern heating system. My father's library, previously such an erudite space, has been transformed into a bright, modern family kitchen. I couldn't bring myself to get rid of his rather grandiose bookcase though, with its ornate carvings and other additions he so lovingly stuck on. To me it represents all he stood for: knowledge, culture and intellect; everything I now hold dear for myself and my family. Our books now line its shelves and we've had to find a new place for the gilded eagle he had perched on the top – it looks great on top of the kitchen cupboard.

Gradually, as we've made our mark, the house has lost the stuffiness it used to have when I was a child. Discarded football kit and children's toys are scattered throughout. Little people tumble through the door impatient to get out and explore the extensive garden with its overgrown brambles snaking over the air-raid shelter hidden at the back. On rainy days I can hear them rampaging up and down the stairs hooting with laughter as they play hide-and-seek or Power Rangers or whatever the latest craze is. This is "home" I tell myself, time and again.

Only now do I have the courage to stand still and survey what's around me. Only now can I appreciate my parents' legacy, the knowledge and culture I rejected for so long. And now, my family is at home in the house I had never wanted yet always needed.

One day our children will be grown up. Perhaps they, too, will be faced with what to do with our house after we've gone. I hope they won't feel, as I did, weighed down by possessions and history. I hope they will be free to choose for themselves; to change and to adapt, but also to discover the heart of the place we call home.